1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to methods, computer-based systems and computer program products for managing documents, in particular documents stored to, or retrieved from, application service providers.
2. Discussion of the Background
A system for storing and retrieving documents to and from application service providers (ASPs) is disclosed in co-pending application Ser. No. 09/684,965, the entire content of which is hereby incorporated by reference. As explained in that document, an ASP is an entity, typically a company, that offers users (individual customers, companies, corporations, organizations, etc . . . ) access over a network, such as the Internet, to applications and related services would otherwise have to be located on the user's local computer. For example, ASPs can provide searchable databases of legal, medical, financial, educational, scientific, or marketing documents. In this system for managing documents, a computer based document manager is connected to users (including for example multi function product “MFPs”, e.g., printers, scanners, digital copiers, fax machines, or digital cameras) via a network (e.g., the Internet) and to ASPs via a network (e.g., the Internet).
The document manager is configured to receive data from a user, receive data from an ASP based on the user input, transform the received data in some desired way, and output the transformed data stream to the user. The data sent by the user to the document manager can include a document, a request to transfer a document from the user to an ASP, and/or a request to retrieve a document from an ASP. The data sent by the ASP to the document manager can include a document, a URL, and/or billing information.
For example, the document manager allows a user to store a document at the ASP. The document manager may be in a partnership with the ASPs to provide storage at the ASPs for documents of users, i.e. customers of the document manager. For instance, a user may decide to store sensitive legal documents, insurance contracts, or digital certificates on a local storage device for a predetermined period of time, and have the documents protected from loss, theft, fire, disaster, etc . . . by storing them at an ASP, which may provide better protection for the secured documents. In this case, the user benefits from the ASP's know-how for handling and protecting secured documents. The ASP can charge a fee for the storage. The document manager can include this fee with other fees (e.g., from other ASPs) in a unified bill for the benefit of the user.
Such a network-based document management system, also referred to as a “Document Mall,” gives its users secure access to their documents and files from anywhere on the network, from anywhere in the world when the network is the Internet. The system enables users to collaborate with colleagues and share documents around the corner or around the globe.
The co-pending patent application Ser. No. 09/795,438 discloses an image forming apparatus providing user-interfaces to permit an operator to conveniently interact with ASPs and with a document manager, such as those disclosed in previously mentioned Ser. No. 09/684,965, the entire content of application Ser. No. 09/795,438 is hereby incorporated by reference. This system permits an operator to take advantage of the services offered by the document manager, such as document storage at ASPs and document retrieval from ASPs, by interacting conveniently via menus displayed on an image forming apparatus, such as an MFP. For example, the operator may request the document manager to store a document at an ASP by inputting a storage request. The MFP scans the document to be stored and sends the document to the desired storage location using a menu displayed at the MFP. The operator may also request the document manager to retrieve a document from an ASP by inputting a retrieval request and keywords to find the desired document using a menu displayed at the MFP.
The above systems provide advantages with respect to billing, e.g., by generating a unified bill from charges of different ASPs. These systems, however, do not provide much flexibility in terms of how the charges are computed. In these systems, the ASPs might charge the document manager a fixed flat fee for their services, and the document manager may charge its users a fixed flat fee for its services. Such procedures create little incentive for the document manager to promote the use of a particular ASP among its existing clients, nor does it create much intra-network competition among already affiliated ASPs. Such procedures do not provide ASPs with much information about their users, such as their needs and habits. The ASPs therefore cannot use such information to improve their services, nor to effectively market their services.
A number of conventional Internet services, providing web services and web contents, are based on a charge per connection time. Another method of charging is based on the transmission data amount, such as packet specific charge in wireless cellular telephone systems. These conventional billing systems, however, are not ideal for a document management service in part because they cannot take into account the services related to the processing of the documents. Another billing method includes manually inputting job information into a computer to generate billing information. This manual method, however, is burdensome, inefficient and prone to errors.